As is well known in the baking industry, bakery products such as hamburger buns, rolls, and similar bakery products are almost universally packaged in polyethylene wrapping material to protect the bakery products against staleness, contamination, and tampering.
In an automated commercial bakery, bakery products are baked and aligned into columns for movement through a slicing machine. The sliced products are then gathered into groups of 6 or 12, depending upon the desired package size, and wrapped in polyethylene wrapping material. Heretofore, various devices, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,355,857 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,760,553 have been provided for wrapping bakery products with polyethylene wrapping materials.
One of the drawbacks to the typical prior art design for apparatus of this type involves the fact that polyethylene has a relatively high melting point, thereby requiring the application of heat for a relatively long period of time to melt the polyethylene sufficiently to effect a seal between the various sheets of the material comprising the bakery product package. For this reason, the prior art wrapping apparatus have required that the products being packaged remain in a stationary position during the sealing operation. Such requirement is detrimental in that it results in intermittent movement of the bakery product during the sealing operation, thereby slowing the packaging process. Thus, the overall process of slicing the bakery products, assembling the bakery products into groups for packaging, and packaging the bakery products is slowed down by the fact that the transverse sealing step has heretofore been stationary.
An additional drawback to typical prior art design for apparatus of this type involves the fact that the completed bakery product package contains excess air allowing shifting and separating of the bakery products upon leaving the product line of the commercial bakery.